


Warmth

by Moontyger



Category: DCU (Comics), Robin (Comics)
Genre: Community: batfam_exchange, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Remixed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-06
Updated: 2014-01-06
Packaged: 2018-01-07 18:06:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1122765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moontyger/pseuds/Moontyger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes Tim has too much of the Bat tendency to brood. Dick isn't one to just let that go on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Warmth

Gotham is rarely silent, even late at night. Traffic slows down in the wee hours of the morning, once the bars are closed and even the employees have gone home, but it never truly stops. It's rarely peaceful either, but on nights like this it comes close. A cold, soaking rain has been coming down for hours; it's enough to keep even the most determined criminals indoors, much less the sort of petty street crime Robin's often involved in stopping.

Which means he should have gone home a long time ago. He could be tucked in bed, making an early night of it for once, but instead Tim has stayed here, perched on a rooftop watching an empty alley for hours. He's soaked: the costume is water-resistant, but long enough in rain like this and it finds all the openings, the little spaces where it's not quite skin tight and works its way inside, little cold drips gradually becoming a more general damp.

He seems lost in thought, but he's not so out of it that he misses the quiet thump of feet landing on the roof or the faint twang of a jumpline retracting. Slowly, he turns a neck that feels half-petrified from cold and hours of virtual motionlessness to look behind him.

The first thing he sees is a cup of convenience store coffee held out in his general direction. Tim turns enough to be able to look up and meet Dick's masked gaze. 

“You looked like you could use a warm up.” 

Tim nods and forces himself to his feet. He's cold and stiff enough that it takes some effort, but it just makes the coffee feel even hotter when he takes the cup, warming his hands even through the heavy gloves. He doesn't even like convenience store coffee, isn't convinced that anyone truly does, but right now, it tastes like heaven.

Someone else might have been openly worried, maybe even angry with him for moping around in the rain, but in true original Robin style, Nightwing makes light of it. “Did you lose a bet? Or maybe you were thinking of taking up asceticism? You'd make a pretty lousy monk, you know.”

Tim shook his head. “No, nothing like that.” His voice is a little hoarse and he has to clear his throat a couple of times before he can speak clearly, but a little more coffee helps with that.

“I'd ask if this were a game anyone could play, but it doesn't look like much fun.”

Tim shrugs; he's not sure _he_ can explain what he was doing, so he can't expect anyone else to understand.

“Well, if you're not too attached to your gargoyle imitation over there, I thought we could go back to my place, get changed, and then out for breakfast – my treat.”

The invitation is probably the closest Dick will come to saying he's worried about him, but now that he's offered, it sounds awfully good – way better than either staying here or going home, so Tim nods and finishes off the coffee. “Sounds good.”

By the time they get to the apartment Dick's currently using, his frozen fingers and toes have thawed and Tim's beginning to feel a lot more embarrassed about the whole thing. Pretty stupid to just sit up there in the cold and the rain; he should know better. He _does_ know better, really.

Dick's place is the usual mess, but he's nice enough to find Tim some clothes that have actually been put away rather than left on the floor plus a clean towel to dry his hair. The thick fisherman's sweater and jeans are too big for him, of course, but they're also the sort of thing often worn baggy. And it helps hide the boots he can't change out of – shoes are one thing they can't easily share.

They can't take the rooftop express dressed like this though; they can't afford for someone to see two ordinary-looking guys up there, acting like superheroes. But the all-night diner Dick had in mind isn't far, so he gets out the umbrellas and they walk, making the kind of meaningless small talk they might have if they really were brothers who hadn't seen each other in awhile. Tim's always found that sort of thing uncomfortable, but Dick falls into it like it comes naturally, asking him about school and friends as if there's nothing else he'd rather talk about. It doesn't quite make Tim relax – it's too much like being questioned by parents for that – but he at least feels a little less like he's faking being a normal boy by the time they reached the diner.

It's warm inside, almost hot, and Tim shoves up the sleeves of the sweater as soon as they walk inside. The lights glow warm and golden, especially in contrast to the dark clouds that keep it from being much of a dawn.

Their waitress looks too young to be working at this hour, but her smile when she seats them is genuine.

“Slow night?” Dick asks her, answering her smile with one of his own.

She seems charmed, as women usually are when Dick smiles at them. “The slowest. Must be something pretty dire to bring you two out in this.”

Tim watches Dick make small talk with the waitress before they order and envies his way with people. It isn't that he doesn't have strengths of his own; he knows he does. Even though he's younger, there are still things he's better at than Dick. This just isn't one of them and sometimes it seems pretty handy.

When the waitress finally leaves, she's practically humming as she goes to get their coffee and place their orders with the kitchen. 

Tim shakes his head as he watches her. “I'll never understand how you do that.”

“Do what?”

“Just talk to people like that.” 

Dick shrugs. “Most people just want someone to pay attention to them.”

“Is that why you're here? To pay attention to me?” The words come out more bitter than he meant them to be. It's not Dick he's angry with, if he's really angry with anyone.

Dick looks at him thoughtfully, but their food arrives before he can answer. They're both several bites in before he finally says anything else. “I was just passing by and I saw you there. You looked like you could use a friend.”

“I guess I'm just trying to figure things out.” He tries to think about how to explain it. “I have a hard time being both sometimes.”

Dick nods, so he keeps going, before he can really think about it and remember that maybe a diner isn't the place to be having this conversation, no matter how deserted it is. “I used to think I wouldn't do this forever. One day I'd stop and just be me again.”

“I remember. You told me that once.”

“And then I had my chance and it was... Remember that time when Bruce forgot? When he was just Bruce? And then he said that we had no relationship with that man.” Trying to talk about it without revealing anything is awkward and yet, in some strange way, it seems to make it easier. “It was like that, except the person I had no relationship with was myself.”

“So you couldn't quit.”

“Right. I couldn't, but I didn't even want to. Not anymore.”

“Is that such a bad thing?”

Tim shrugs, not sure how to answer that. Maybe it isn't, but he doesn't yet know what it means for him, for who he is and who he wants to be.

“No one can really answer those questions for you. Why you do it, for how long, what you want – that's different for everyone.”

Tim nods, he suspected as much. More than suspected, really. He and Dick had had different reasons for becoming Robin; of course they'd have different reasons for quitting the hero business, if they ever did. But knowing that doesn't exactly help.

Dick finishes the last of his breakfast, then looks directly at Tim. The look in his eyes is focused, as though he's not just looking at Tim – he's looking _only_ at Tim – and Tim thinks he sees why other people respond to him the way they do. 

“Why don't you spend today with me?” he suggests. “Get some sleep, then we'll order some pizza and watch movies or something. Maybe we can bridge some of the gaps.” 

Tim isn't sure it will help, but he's also not about to turn down the chance to spend more time with Dick. In many ways, Dick is the reason he became Robin in the first place and even now, he's pretty sure it's still a big part of the confused tangle his motivations have become. “All right.”

The waitress smiles hopefully at Dick as they pay their bill, but Tim can tell it's hopeless, even if she can't. Dick was nice to her because he's that kind of person, not because he was interested. There's probably a lot of this sort of thing in his life. If they're really going to spend more time together like this, as Dick and Tim instead of Nightwing and Robin, he'll probably get used to seeing it.

As they head back to Dick's apartment, the rain has started to taper off. It's not a sunny day, at least not yet, but it's no longer quite so miserable. 

“Looks like we'll have to work tonight,” Tim points out. He likes nice weather as much as the next person, but he also knows that anything that brings people out into the street brings crime with it. And crime, at least for the two of them, means work, just as surely as if they were henchmen to someone like Two-Face or Penguin instead of the protégés of Batman.

Dick looks over at him and grins in a way that makes him wonder what he's getting into. “Sure. Eventually.”

Tim's pretty sure that doesn't mean they'll blow it off entirely, whatever it was meant to imply. But it also probably means they'll do it together and he's not going to complain about that either.

But first, they need to sleep. Dick offers him the bed, but Tim insists on the couch. He's already inconvenienced him enough and he's tired enough to sleep just about anywhere. As he curls up under his borrowed blankets, he thinks that Dick must have slept here a fair amount, too – maybe on nights when he was too tired to make it back to the bed. It smells like him, or maybe that's just the pillow.

He's not sure when he started noticing what Dick smelled like, but it's a comforting scent. Even on this old lumpy couch, it makes it easier to sleep than it often was in his own bed. Tim takes a deep breath and smiles. He doesn't know where he's going or what he's going to do or even what he wants, at least in a larger sense. But he does know that right now, he's exactly where he wants to be.


End file.
